Gianforte joins stealth attack on Wilderness in Montana

Gianforte joins stealth attack on Wilderness in MontanaBy George Nickas

Montana’s designated wildernesses are the pride of our state. We might fight like hell over whether to designate this area or that one as new wilderness, but the Bob Marshall, Scapegoat, Selway-Bitterroot, Absaroka-Beartooth, and our other protected wildernesses are sacred to Montanans of all stripes.

That is, apparently, all stripes except Rep. Greg Gianforte, who just voted to effectively repeal the Wilderness Act and open places like “the Bob” to endless forms of habitat manipulation, predator control, road building, and anything else that might be construed as benefiting “hunting, angling, recreational, shooting or wildlife conservation.”

This stealth attack on the Wilderness Act comes in the form of H.R. 3668, the Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement (SHARE) Act, introduced by Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina. It would affect every wilderness in the nation, including all of Montana’s wilderness gems.

By nearly unanimous vote, Congress passed the 1964 Wilderness Act to protect America’s wildest landscapes. The law describes wilderness as “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man... retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions.” The Wilderness Act is essentially nature’s Bill of Rights, places where we humans, out of a sense of respect, humility and foresight, have agreed to let nature be. Since passage of the Wilderness Act, the National Wilderness Preservation System has grown to include 110 million acres in more than 760 units.

The SHARE Act would turn the Wilderness Act on its head allowing logging, chaining, herbicide spraying or myriad other offenses under the guise of “wildlife conservation” or for providing hunting, fishing, and recreational shooting experiences. While such management might be fine for a Texas game farm, it represents a dramatic change for the Wilderness Act, which for over 50 years has required the preservation of wilderness character as the top priority for public Wildernesses.

The SHARE Act would also allow the construction of “temporary” roads, dams, or other structures in wilderness. And all such projects would be exempt from any environmental review or public scrutiny under the National Environmental Policy Act — in essence making wildernesses some of the least-protected of all public lands.

The bill is being pushed at the behest of the Safari Club International and a few like-minded groups that are upset that wildernesses around the country aren’t managed like game farms, something Montanans roundly rejected at the ballot box not long ago. Not satisfied with the rich diversity of life our wildernesses hold, these groups want wilderness managed solely to benefit their idea of hunting and to favor the animal species they want to shoot. Even if it means building a road or a dam, clear cutting a forest, or wiping out native predators to meet their hunting or angling goals.

Montanans who love our wildest, best places and don’t want them degraded for a selfish few should contact Gianforte and urge him to remove the wilderness-gutting provisions from the SHARE Act — before it’s too late.